Super Storm

Children in New Jersey will have to wait for Halloween this year after Gov. Chris Christie signed an executive order postponing trick-or-treating and other holiday celebrations across the state. Executive Order 105 will postpone Halloween activities until Nov. 5 because of the dangerous conditions left in the wake of super storm Sandy. “I've taken this action to minimize additional risks to lives and the public safety as we begin the process of rebuilding and recovering from Hurricane Sandy,” Christie announced in a written statement.

As the water began to pour into lower Manhattan on Oct. 29, sliding under door frames and into basements, scientists who work in NYU's Smilow Research Building began to realize that something horrible was happening -- something entirely separate from the loss of human life and shelter that would soon follow. Because of the flooding, thousands of mice drowned in Smilow's basement animal facility, which had lost power and seen its generators fail. Their loss wiped away years of careful breeding and meticulous experimental research on heart disease, schizophrenia and other diseases.

As Sandy whipped the East Coast, states struggled to deal with the widespread damage from the super storm, which is blamed in the deaths of at least 33 people in seven states. New York saw Wall Street closed for a second day. Schools were shuttered and hundreds of thousands of people were without power after New Yorkers awoke to scenes of flooding and destruction. On Tuesday morning, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted: "Gov: The construction of this city did not anticipate these type of conditions -- subway, bldg foundations, 911 site nr Hudson.

Since super storm Sandy ravaged neighborhoods and disrupted power along the Eastern Seaboard, tens of thousands of newly homeless Northeasterners and hundreds of thousands more without heat faced temperatures in the 30s this weekend. Residents scrambled to stay fed, warm and alive as a short-term crisis expands into what officials say will be long-term recovery. “People are in homes that are uninhabitable,” New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said in a Sunday morning news conference.

Airline cancellations continued to mount, with a few carriers beginning to cancel flights scheduled for Thursday. Super storm Sandy is now blamed for the cancellation of 18,100 flights, stretching from Saturday to Wednesday, according to the travel monitoring site, Flightaware.com. The canceled flights were primarily to and from storm-ravaged cities along the East Coast. About 50 or so flights were already canceled for Thursday. The website Flightstats.com has animated the effects of the storm on flights in an online video, shown above.

Grab any electrical engineer off the street and they'll tell you salt water conducts electricity. So when super storm Sandy pushed seawater into parking lots at New Jersey's Port of Newark, significant damage to recently imported vehicles was inevitable. Fisker and Toyota learned this first-hand. Fisker fell victim to the most dramatic damage. Sixteen of its Karma vehicles caught fire and burned shortly after this week's storm. These luxury plug-in hybrid vehicles cost at least $95,000 each and count Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio among its celebrity owners.

The unwritten political rule when disaster strikes is that campaigns take a back seat, far behind recovery efforts. Such is the case with super storm Sandy, as both presidential campaigns put their official electioneering efforts on hold while the tempest slammed the East Coast this week. Putting the storm into political context was left to pundits and other professional opinionators . But where the candidates and their on-the-record surrogates kept mum as the storm rolled on shore in New Jersey and New York, L.A. Times readers brought politics to the fore.

The Lakers have donated $50,000 to the American Red Cross to assist victims of super storm Sandy . “Although the devastation caused by this hurricane was thousands of miles from Southern California, we consider the Lakers to be part of a much larger community, and we wanted to do our part to help the recovery of those affected,” said Janie Drexel, director of charitable services. Additionally the team has promised to match up to an additional $50,000 of donations from fans, bringing their total contribution to $100,000.

ASHAROKEN, N.Y. -- The police department, village clerk and mayor's office here all share a three-room, white shingle house 100 feet from the marsh grasses of Northport Bay. In the wake of Sandy, police officers and the clerk were pulling up wet carpet Thursday morning, and there was still no power. The village's 87 years of records were high and dry, stacked in boxes on a large table. The surging bay had flooded the office Monday and filled the road on the other side with four feet of water.

Even as super storm Sandy started to pummel New York City on Monday, New York City Marathon officials insisted the annual race would be able to go on as planned on Sunday. But on Tuesday, the city looks anything but ready to host an event of such magnitude in only five days. The airports and public transportation are shut down, streets are flooded and power is out in many neighborhoods. Marathon organizers promised an update Tuesday. New York Road Runners President Mary Wittenberg said Monday they had contingency plans in place to deal with any situation that might arise.

VALLEY STREAM, N.Y. - Six days after Sandy blasted the south shore of Long Island, Robert Brown's street smells like low tide. He lives three doors down from a creek that feeds into Jamaica Bay on the eastern edge of John F. Kennedy International Airport. During last Monday's storm, he saw the creek water rise out of the storm drain and inch its way up the block like a killer blob of slime in a horror movie. In an hour, it was at his doorstep. His 30-year-old daughter Melissa's bedroom in the basement was submerged.

- With power slowly returning to New York and New Jersey and emergency fuel being rushed into the region, authorities turned Sunday to a potentially bigger problem since super storm Sandy: where to house the tens of thousands of people whose homes are no longer habitable. With a freeze expected in some areas Monday and another, smaller storm on the horizon, the housing problem took on urgency. Even with power and fuel restored, many houses no longer have functioning heating systems, since flooding saltwater ruined many basement heaters and electrical systems.

In a strong episode hosted by comedian Louis C.K., “SNL” helped lighten the post-Sandy mood but without being too heavy-handed or comparing the storm to Sept. 11 (as Mayor Michael Bloomberg did, to some criticism, when attempting to keep the New York City marathon from being canceled). C.K. did address the seriousness of the storm damage, however, in a separate letter to his fans sent prior to the show. The cold open gently teased the mayor, played by Fred Armisen, as he addressed the city and pointed out that his ban on giant sugary sodas probably prevented the deaths of many obese New Yorkers who would have otherwise floated down the Hudson River.

November 4, 2012 | By Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Scott Gold, Los Angeles Times

Sandy, the aurora is rising behind us; the pier lights our carnival life forever. - Bruce Springsteen POINT PLEASANT, N.J. - There were all of 21 homes on the little cul-de-sac. There wasn't much space between them and nobody much cared - after all, Riviera Court was surrounded on three sides by water, and everybody's "yard" was a dock, a boat and a route to the sea, which seemed like such a nice thing just a week ago. Lori Rebimbas was at home when Hurricane Sandy arrived with sinister clouds, then shrieking wind.

The number of lives lost and families shattered from Hurricane Sandy continued to climb Saturday, with the death toll now at more than 110. The number of lives claimed in New York from the super storm was reduced by one to 48, after medical examiners determined two deaths initially linked to the storm were not, and another body was found during the recovery effort. INTERACTIVE: Before and after Hurricane Sandy Hardest-hit parts of the state are still buried in rubble and tunnels in metropolitan New York still flooded, leaving officials to wearily expect that the number could keep climbing.

NASCAR and five-time Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, along with Johnson's team and one of his main sponsors, are helping send relief to victims of super storm Sandy. Johnson, who's racing for a sixth title this season, felt the impact of Sandy first-hand because the lower floors of his New York apartment were flooded and the building remained closed. "So it's impacted us in a small way, to many others in a much greater capacity," Johnson told reporters Friday at Texas Motor Speedway, site of Sunday's next Sprint Cup race.

In a strong episode hosted by comedian Louis C.K., “SNL” helped lighten the post-Sandy mood but without being too heavy-handed or comparing the storm to Sept. 11 (as Mayor Michael Bloomberg did, to some criticism, when attempting to keep the New York City marathon from being canceled). C.K. did address the seriousness of the storm damage, however, in a separate letter to his fans sent prior to the show. The cold open gently teased the mayor, played by Fred Armisen, as he addressed the city and pointed out that his ban on giant sugary sodas probably prevented the deaths of many obese New Yorkers who would have otherwise floated down the Hudson River.

NEW YORK - Fallen trees blocked winding Greenwich Village streets normally jammed with tourists and taxis. Muddy sandbags squished against empty high-rises in the Financial District. The facade of a building had ripped off in Chelsea, leaving apartments bare to camera-toting crowds on the street. For a change, it wasn't just out-of-towners wandering slack-jawed at the sights of Manhattan. Facing a massive cleanup from Sandy's devastation Tuesday, New Yorkers were in a state of disbelief as they realized that America's largest city, for all its museums and Broadway shows, its noisy subways and neon-lighted squares, was no match for a super storm.

The Lakers have donated $50,000 to the American Red Cross to assist victims of super storm Sandy . “Although the devastation caused by this hurricane was thousands of miles from Southern California, we consider the Lakers to be part of a much larger community, and we wanted to do our part to help the recovery of those affected,” said Janie Drexel, director of charitable services. Additionally the team has promised to match up to an additional $50,000 of donations from fans, bringing their total contribution to $100,000.

ASHAROKEN, N.Y. -- When James Zima built his dream house on a small cove facing Long Island Sound back in 1978, he studied storm records and built his cedar plank home on stilts, 2 feet above the highest storm surge in the previous 100 years. Super storm Sandy brought the water within 18 inches of his floorboards Monday night. That's when he ran uphill to a neighbor's house. "I barely survived it," said Zima, 61, a lean and taughtly built man with wisps of white hair. On Thursday, he had just finished raking a 2-foot mat of sea grass off his lawn.